Plato gave us the soul and ideal forms.  Aristotle gave us the Earth and all things on it. Augustine gave us the immortal soul and Roman Catholicism until Cardan’s formula and differential calculus.  The calculus gave us the moon on which to stroll about taking pictures. Agusgtine’s City of God established that each of us lives in two worlds: the city of law and the city of God. It was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who wrote.  “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.”  This made him the most reviled and hunted man in Europe. Jean-Paul Sartre, a French-speaking high school teacher, sat out the war in Paris writing a book that demolished the entire tradition of European Philosophy.  In one lecture, hand in pocket, that took 45 minutes to get to the stage, he conquered the intellectual life of Europe and America: “Existentialism is a humanism”.  [That lecture became Social Justice.]

Dr. Benito Rakower was educated at Queens College and Harvard University, where he received a doctorate in the teaching of English. Dr. Rakower taught writing at Harvard College, and has lectured on film at the French Library in Boston.

Dr. Rakower is a superb instructor—well-prepared and broadly knowledgeable. - OLLI Patron